The Square peg in a Round hole

This is a comparison between two of the top Content Management systems (CMS), Drupal and Joomla. WordPress did not make the comparison because its more a blogging systems than a CMS, although it’s working hard to shed it’s dippers.

Site Building

– Flexibility & Power: Drupal looks significantly more powerful — much more flexible. Looks like Views, CCK, Panels give Drupal a huge advantage over Joomla. You simply can’t get that flexibility with Joomla. Joomla developers design around their own paradigm with very little flexibility. You can get up and running much quicker with Joomla, but you will hit the wall sooner or later.

Performance

– Drupal blows away Joomla. With the new version of Joomla, the good template makers junk them up with gee-whiz gadgets that are not suitable for the enterprise

Learning Curve

– Joomla is far easier to get up and running. Even with all the free videos, blogs, etc, Drupal is still a lot more challenging. Big oppty for comprehensive business business/enterprise book/education

Templates

Joomla wins by a huge margin. For example, companies like Joomlart, Joomlashack do a good job. Drupal theme companies are simply horrific. What’s needed is a Template strategy that emulates the requirements for the top web sites in the country and, bundles modules, blocks etc. that work out-of-the-box to give businesses a head-start. For example, with our Websphere Portal product, we deliver incredible Themes/Skins that are rock solid and professional with no fuss or muss. I think you guys have a good stated strategy, but you’re missing a big oppty to deliver what enterprises really need.

Your templates are the best I’ve seen, but, an enterprise that is just getting started with Drupal will still have a huge ramp to climb to get a News site, mag site, etc. to look good. Joomlart delivers their Teline II template with a special install that gives you all the sample data, all the components in place — everything in place.

Finally, the biggest problem with Drupal templates is that the developers completely miss one of the key elements that any evaluator looks at: the menu system. If you don’t have a professional navigation system on your web site, you’re perceived as a low quality site. The other top items: Layout, Graphics, speed are also critical, and Drupal developers don’t seem to care. Exception:

Code developers

Based on my limited review, it looks Drupal coders are much more professional, skilled, disciplined. Good Joomla coders are rare. Must have something to due with the Drupal culture. I’m sure the Joomla devs are just as capable, they just don’t institute the same rigor

Admin

Content Management

– Drupal’s taxonomy system is excellent. Joomla’s “straight-jacket” approach (Content items confined to one Section/Category) is poor. Joomla’s admin console is much easier to organize, find content. Joomla’s WYSIWYGPro is better than the options available for Drupal.

Content Presentation

– Drupal’s tools are very, very good — they don’t come close to the built-in power of IBM tools — but they’re light years better than Joomla. I like CCK, Views, but wonder why they aren’t part of the code base. Seems odd. WIth Joomla, you have to acquire components that will meet 60-80% of your needs. For example, iJoomla has a tremendous news component, but it will never meet the capabilities of Drupal’s CCK, Views, etc.

Multitier Deployment

I’m shocked that there are no good tutorials, articles, education on the proper method for implementing Dev, Test, Staging, Dev environments. Drupal and Joomla communities both suffer from this. Also, basic backup and restore is not addressed adequately. The Drupal community is clueless on this. Joomla at least has two good solutions. If I decide to recommend Drupal for a production site, I’l recommend use Xcloner from Joomlaplug — this product will work with Drupal and does backup and restore of the site and the SQL db.
Summary to Date

– Use Joomla if you want to get nice looking site up quickly and can deal with a slower system, rigid content categorization and limited design/configuration options.
– Use Drupal if you want high performance, scalability, good content management and significant design flexibility. But, be prepared to spend a lot of time/money to get the site to look professional.